Dennis Ross Quotes
You don't have any communication between the Israelis and the Iranians. You have all sorts of local triggers for conflict. Having countries act on a hair trigger - where they can't afford to be second to strike - the potential for a miscalculation or a nuclear war through inadvertence is simply too high.
Ross, Dennis. Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. United States Senate, 2015.
This was the last letter she wrote from the White House after her husband was assassinated.
Trieste was occupied by the British and Americans theoretically, but Tito’s Yugoslavian troops had done most of the WWII fighting and dying in the area and wanted control for the Russian Allies of which Tito was then one. There were frequent armed standoff’s of Anglo Americans and Yugoslav troops that could easily have evolved to full scale fighting. Nine months later, Tito broke with Stalin. An interesting historical fact is that Richard M. Nixon was one of the Congressional Delegation then visiting Trieste.
One new danger that nuclear powers add to the usual problems of conflict, is that a nuclear power, about to lose a war in a humiliating way, might just use his nuclear weapons in revenge. So much damage will be done that the victory turned out to have been a bad thing. So ironically, with a nuclear enemy. Your military dare not win to dominantly with conventional weapons.
The President, on the Memorial Day weekend, made a secret, surprise visit to the war zone in Afghanistan. This quotation got the largest round of cheers and applause of his entire speech.
He was discussing the conflict in the Ukraine between keeping their historical economic relationships with Russia and being more involved with Europe and the West. He observed that the Ukraine has been for centuries not only and integral part of Russia but played a huge role in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Kissinger urged Ukraine independence and relations with both Russia and Europe and not making the Russians feel that they have little or no influence over what was not very long ago a critical part of their country.
Dennis B. Ross is an American diplomat and author. He has served as the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush, the special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton, and was a special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia (which includes Iran) to the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
